Sycamore wood question...

[Greg McCallister]

I have come across some sycamore and was wondering how this wood is for woodworking. How does it finish, cutting, plaining, hardness compared to oak?
Would it be a good wood for making kitchen cabinets?

[Richard M. Wolfe]

Sycamore has interlocking grain, and it is generally quartersawn to show a lace-like figure. According to the Janka scale, the wood is about as hard as SYP (southern yellow pine), which is an acceptable hardness for most projects. I haven't worked a lot of it but find what I've handled to cut and sand well. It can have a problem with planing due to the interlocking grain, which can cause tearout. As far as the quality of wood it would work well for cabinet construction, except for the color. The wood is mostly a light color like maple but what I've seen has broad bands of brown through it and for a large project like kitchen cabinets I don't think would work well.....much too "busy".

[David Freed]

Plain sawn sycamore will twist, warp, bow, etc very severely. I was drying 3000 bf at a time for a cabinet shop. He was using it for drawersides because it was cheap. In my area it is sawn into pallet lumber and crossties. After 4 kilnloads he switched to another species because he was having to throw away too much. He would plane a bundle one day and the next day much of it would be warped and twisted. In the kiln, boards on the bottom of an 8' stack would twist so badly, they would raise 1 to 2 inches off of the sticks. Sycamore is the only species that I have had that kind of trouble.
With that said I think quartersawn sycamore is beautiful. Many people do use it both plain and q sawn.

[Dennis Peacock]

It is great for turnings...bowls, platters, and such.
The stuff around here is pretty hard and burns hot in a woodstove.
Cuts good, sands good, and finishes nice as well.

[Joe Meazle]

Syacamore is one of my favorites and i think it is vastly unerrated and under used. IMHO the bad reputation for twisting/warping comes from the fact that (at least around here) Sycamores are most commonly found along creek banks and tend to reach out over the creek at an angle to grab the sun. This creates uneven growth and tension in the wood. I am in a wet enough area that they actually grow in town in yards/lawns. I have some that I cut and milled myself last spring and it has stayed arrow straight. it was from an old tree with a very stratihg and vertical singular main trunk. So I think that if you know about the tree from which the lumber came you can avoid some of the issues. There can be a lot of color variation. The 1/4sawn is butiful but as stated can get a little busy. I think it goes well with cherry as in using cherry for the frame and 1/4sawn sycamore for the pannel. It also works alot like cherry. It can be very prone to chipping out if you try to get too aggresive with planing/jointing. OK I will get off my soapbox (made of sycamore, of course) now.

Joe

[D-Alan Grogg]

When resawn and bookmatched, QS Sycamore can be very striking. I've done this and the results were fantastic IMO. If a good choice of contrasting species is used (eg, for door frames, etc), then the you will have a great looking kitchen. I used Jatoba because the red hues are very similar. I wouldn't use Walnut because Sycamore doesn't have brown hues. Mahogany might be another good choice. Jointing/planing can result in some tearout, but not any worse than some other woods I've worked (eg, Black Cherry or Jatoba).

[Bert Johansen]

Greg, the old-timers wouldn't touch sycamore if it came from one of the limbs because of the warp and twist. However, as others have said, the trunk wood if quarter-sawn can yield some amazing figure.

Having repeated what the old-timers say, I harvested a large limb a few years ago and cut it up and dried it. Yup, it warped alright, but I resawed it and machined it to smaller sizes and use it occasionally for some unusual trim. In the photo below (a soon-to-be clipboard), the innermost wide band is figured maple, and the outer whitish bands are sycamore. Note the tight figure in the sycamore. It can be quite stunning, but a little bit goes a long way.

I like the idea of resawn matched pairs for cabinet panels, but I would seek wood from a straight trunk.

[Alex Shanku]

I used some to make my tail vise. It looks pretty nice, I think.

It is a pain to plane, imo. I scraped and sanded.

I have some more in my shop, but haven'thttp://www.hunt101.com/data/500/Bench4.jpg had another project to use it on.

Alex

[Mark Stutz]

I've used some for drawer fronts on a shop cabinet. Picked it up primarily because it was so cheap. It was all just a little twisted, but S2S stock easily yielded 1/2 plus drawer fronts. The grain is a little plain and there is color variation. Once milled, though, they have been very stable.
http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?t=17161

Mark

[Jacob Reverb]

All I know is, it's miserable to split for firewood. I guess it has tyloses that make the grain interlock.

The odd thing is, so does white oak, but white oak is one of the easier firewoods that I come across to split!

[Peter Quinn]

I asked some more experienced guys at work about it a while back, they said other than quarter sawn for thin parts which won't be bound by design or as re-sawn veneer they wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole. Apparently they had experienced serious movement issues.

I find it stunning visually but generally prefer simpler patterns for kitchens where the shear volume of surface area can create a dizzying look if figured wood is used.

[John Shuk]

In times gone by it used quite often for the carcasses of drawers. That would make me guess that it is pretty stable.

[Von Bickley]

I just talked with a fellow woodworker who is also a retired forester. He said the wood would be fine for cabinets if it was "properly dried". Most problems that come from wood is because it is not properly dried.

As someone also mentioned, sycamore doesn't split well. Years ago, when somebody cut down a large sycamore, all the neighbors would come to get a chunk of sycamore to use for their chopping block.

A lot of the large chopping blocks that older people remember seeing in the meat departments at the old timey grocery stores were sycamore.

[Greg McCallister]

Thanks everyone for the replies.
Might pick up a small amount then, would prefer maple for the kitchen.
Just thought the grain pattern was almost like a curly maple.
It is cheep for sure.
Thanks again

Greg

[Jack Briggs]

..........then again:







http://www.briggsguitars.com/www/images/226-226.jpg

[Sam Yerardi]

Greg

I LOVE QUARTER-SAWN SYCAMORE. It is a beautiful underated wood no matter how you finish it. One reason I'm sort of glad that it is underated is the cost (if you can get it quarter-sawn). I've got a couple large beams of it and in the next month I'm getting about 100 bd ft of it, so yeah, I love sycamore.

[Scott Brihn]

In December I picked up about 100bf of 4/4 Q/S Sycamore from Metro Hardwoods in Cleveland. They dry lumber via a vacuum kiln (which looks like a giant coffin) and the boards have stayed flat.

I had not planned on buying Sycamore but after seeing how beautiful the Q/S figure was I could not resist.

[Rob Bodenschatz]

My sycamore & me are not on very good terms right now...

http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?t=78546

[Dennis Peacock]

..........then again:


Ok Jack.....

I want to see the WHOLE picture and instrument. :D

[Al Navas]

Jack, I LOVE that guitar!!!

Greg, A little more sycamore, from a project some time ago (finished with wiped-on Waterlox):

http://sandal-woodsblog.com/images/tray_dovetails.jpg

http://sandal-woodsblog.com/images/tile_tray.jpg

[Wade Lippman]

Just don't try to stain it. Blotches worse than any wood I have seen.

[Kirk Poore]

Most sycamore I've used is pretty light colored, even when oiled. But some can be a nice reddish color or dark tan. These two chairs both have sycamore legs, feet, and bosses, and oak other parts:
http://medievaloak.com/images/bluechairs3.jpg

Both were oiled with linseed oil which darkened them considerably.

Sycamore is very hard to hand plane successfully--I find it hard to read the grain to make sure I'm not about to plane "uphill". But it sands pretty well, and hasn't posed any problem for my planer. It does like to warp a lot. I will only roughly joint and plane, then cut out my parts and let them sit and twist for a few days, then rejoint and plane to final thickness.

Another bonus is that around here big, thick boards are pretty cheap.

Kirk

[Jack Briggs]

Al & Dennis - thanks much, guys!

For Dennis, a couple additional shots of the guitar.

http://www.briggsguitars.com/www/images/273-273.jpg


http://www.briggsguitars.com/www/images/259-259.jpg

I've got to mention about the sycamore that I used:

It had spalting in part (pic) and was air dried a few decades ago. I was told it was at least 50 yrs. old when I got it in 2005. Much of the lighter parts were really soft and spongey. When I asked a cabinetmaker in FL about it he supported the 'old sycamore' trait of degradation in time. Maybe this only applies to sycamore that's air dried and exposed to the elements. It made it tricky to carve!


http://www.briggsguitars.com/www/images/Bri2.jpg


http://www.briggsguitars.com/www/images/4016head.JPG



Cheers,

[Sam Yerardi]

Beautiful instrument, Jack!

[Jim W. White]

Jack,

Thanks for the extra pictures of the guitar!! ...trully a work of art!


...as to sycamore ...when quatersawn it seems pretty stable. I've used it for drawer stock on several occasions.

I don't think I'd buy any that was flatsawn ...just not worth the risk. Quarterswan lumber is much more dimensionally stable regardless of the species; but in the case of sycamore it is almost a requirement.

Jim in Idaho